Understanding the Feared Possible Self as a Trauma Response

I spent years training as a trauma therapist, before I learned that 1 in 4 individuals with PTSD meet criteria for a co-occurring diagnosis of OCD. Until that time, I had not understood that if you’re treating trauma, you’re almost certainly also working with OCD.

Most of us still think of obsessions as fears, so irrational that we can spot from a mile away and compulsions as behaviors, so obvious or tic-like that they’ll make it “easy” to recognize. 

And yet, research increasingly shows that obsessional doubts form, not from irrational fears, but from faulty reasoning. This faulty reasoning relies on a combination of obsessional reasoning and narratives connected with your feared possible self. 

Feared possible self. Wait, say more.

Feared possible self, in other words, the person you’re afraid you are or could become if your doubts are true: “maybe I am or could become a fraud. Unloveable. A failure. Abandoned. Evil. Helpless. Out of control. A burden. Unloveable…”

And the thing is, whether you have OCD or not, these possibilities are terrifying. But with OCD, the feared possible self (FPS) becomes such a visceral presence in our thoughts that we focus all of our energy and attention on trying to neutralize or disprove this doubt. Often, we do this, while ignoring any information about who we really are, what we actually think, feel, or experience, our values, our capacity, our principles, or our lived experience. 

In I-CBT, we call this “the bubble”. The Bubble feels like being trapped in your own personal horror movie.

This horror movie represents a form of dissociation called “imaginal absorption”, aka, “I’m so focused on this story that I lose track of the world around me.” These stories use a distorted kind of logic drawn from unsafe experiences of ourselves in connection with our caregivers, partners, and the world at large.

In other words, the feared possible self becomes a terrifying specter when our past experiences hold more of our attention than our current experience of ourself and the world. Which is another way of saying trauma. 

The feared possible self has weight and power because we are more focused on something out there, than we are on our own experience. Which is another way of saying trauma. 

The feared possible self exists because we’re not able to connect with what is real in the here and now. Which is another way of saying trauma. 

For individuals with trauma and OCD, the dark void is able to exist because, at some point in our life, the worst thing, the thing that is never supposed to happen, happened. And now we’re doing everything in our power to avoid feeling that way again.

References:

Baylor College of Medicine. Exploring the Differential Diagnosis Between OCD and PTSD. https://www.mirecc.va.gov/visn16/docs/ocd-and-ptsd-fact-sheet.pdf

Frederick Aardema. Resolving OCD: Understanding Your Obsessional Experience. (Volume 1). (2024)

Evaluation of Relationship between Obsessive-compulsive Disorder and Dissociative Experiences. (Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5953015/#sec15

Understanding Your OCD and PTSD Symptoms Worksheet. https://spaces-cdn.owlstown.com/blobs/4216aecxvscz4lg82344veqe6mkm

Reassurance and Uncertainty in OCD and PTSD. https://spaces-cdn.owlstown.com/blobs/dwawgggk0rkojoglgjv504tszj5r

Safety Behaviors in OCD and PTSD. https://spaces-cdn.owlstown.com/blobs/lb9cirbhvzw314g40gl94lc8oa8q